Lots of hops with a nice malty backbone on this one. It is released twice yearly; once in the Summer and once in the late Fall / early Winter. Winter bottles have green & red ink, Summer is blue & red. There is a variation in the malt bill for each version.

Poured from the bottle into a Dogfish Head Ale glass, we're pushing freshness here pretty hard but so it goes.

Quite a bit of hue to this beer, Deep orange and murky brown with some lemon yellow edges and quite opaque. Very thick three to four finger head and off white with lots of clumping lacing and creamed thickness.

Sweet nose, not so much hop forward as to probably be expected at this point, but some real nice tropical juice notes, and light toasty brown sugar. Some herbal green tea like action to match as well.

Juicy leafy tea body, with some light airy sugary brown malt action finish on the first sip. Slow aromatics of tea and mellow bitterness lingers on the aftertaste. Good balance between toasty sweetness and lingering bitter. A bit oily as well.

Even at it's non freshest this beer still delivers quite well. (834 characters)

I really enjoy the Winter Version of YuleSmith, but I've never tried the Summer Edition. To my luck, Hollingshead's Deli had this on-tap during my visit. 12 ounce pour, on to the beer:

It looks more a hefeweizen than a DIPA. Very hazy body, wheat blonde in color, creamy and dense head that stays around and chokes the glass full of lacing. The aroma is mild in intensity, but that is full of juicy hops.Now....I remember the Winter YuleSmith having a bigger malt backbone than this. The Summer YuleSmith is loaded with ripe, juicy, sometimes nausiating hops. If you could squeeze the juice out of hops the same way you can sqeeze oranges for oranges juice, you'd think AleSmith had a juicer. Tropical flavors like pinneapple run around, with other sharp citrusy flavors. Pucker up! It's easy on the palate, thanks to its smoothness and masked alcohol.

Why exactly did it take me this long to try Summer YuleSmith? I can easily locate bottles of this stuff, but this was the first time I had found this on draft. This is a delight for a hophead, though I'm personally more fond of the maltier, but still hoppy Winter Version. Maybe I need to go back and re-sample the Winter Version. (1,187 characters)

Thanks to Kroggdawg for bringing this one (the Red and Blue) back from the coast. It's beautiful with big American hops, making it seem like an appropriate 4th of July beer (too bad it's winter now). There's a sweet malt background that provides a wonderful balance and backbone. (279 characters)

22 oz. bottle poured into a tulip. My quest for a 2011 bottle of this has finally paid off. I accidentally drank two 2010s that were well over a year old and didn't particularly like them.

Appearance - Super hazy bright orange body with a nice white head. You can't see through it at all. Retention is good but the lacing is better. Looks like Sunny D with a head.

Smell - Very hoppy smell. Bright lemon flavors and some pine. Super citrusy, though. It's so lemony it verges on smelling like Pine-Sol, though. The combination of lemon, pine, and a bit of alcohol just combines to remind me of lemon floor cleaner. In the 2010 bottle, this was far more prominent.

Taste - The sweetness is far more prevalent in the taste, but it's still very much about the hops. The same flavors come through, but the sweetness puts off the chemical element. I have to say, the sweetness is too much. Hardly any bitterness at all in the finish. Nice, but a little sweet.

Mouthfeel - It could be lighter. That's me being nitpicky, but it's just a bit heavier than I like. Even for 8.5%, there's a lot of unfermented sugars in this. Not cloying, just not as dry as I'd like it.

Overall - So much better fresh than aged (duh). The old one was pretty bad. Much more chemical flavors came through. This one reminds me of Hellhound. Perhaps that's an unfair comparison, since this is nowhere near a DFH malt bill, but still, it reminded me of it. (1,428 characters)

This review is for the summer Yulesmith. What an incredible beer- I really love this brew. To me, this is what a west coast hop bomb should be all about.Even more than Pliny the Elder, I think this beer typifies the pinnacle of the west coast dipa style. Don't get me wrong, I love Pliny, but this beer is even more over the top and for me, a more pure expression of the hops. It pours aslightly hazy orange with a beautiful tight white fluffy head that fades to a cap and leaves some lacing. Impressive for the abv. The smell right off shouts "hop bomb" with gorgeous deep grapefruit and orange rind and pine notes with a whiff of wax. The taste is even more redolent of hops, with the same citrus and pine, and a long deep bitterness nicely balanced on the finish especially by a slight fruity sweetness from the yeast esters and malt. The malt background is there, and quite dry, but it is mostly eclipsed by the hops. You know it is there more by what you don't experience- this is not hop water, but a deep, rich, robust brew. The malt is there, in spades, but as a supporting part and not an equal. Absolutely beautiful. Rich, full mouthfeel keeps it going on. I absolutely love this beer and would drink it by the case were it available locally. Highly recommended.

What follows is a review for Winter Yulesmith, which I also liked but not as much as the Summer stuff. These are two completely different beers and as such I'm going to let my numbers for the summer stuff stand. If I were to seperately rate the summer, it would be:P: 4S: 4.5T: 5MF: 4.5D: 4.5

Pours a hazy orange with a decent head. Aromas of honeyed malt and waxy, piney hops. A bit like Hopslam with the honey and pine. Tastes delicious. Slightly sweet with malt perfectly counterbalanced by a huge piney aftertaste. Smooth and slightly sweet in the mouth, this one is quite eaasy to drink, despite the abv. (1,889 characters)

This is the Summer released Blue & Red bottle...
Appears a semi-transparent orange with a bubbly off white, soapy head that slowly fades out. Scattered streaks of lacing are left around the glass.
Smell is of biscuits, brown sugar, honey, earthy, and sugary orange peel.
Taste is of the mentioned aromas with an earthy, spicy, creamy hop flavor, along with fruit.
Mouthfeel is medium bodied, toasty, earthy, spicey, mellow, fruity, sweet up front with a hoppy bite. (469 characters)

Purchased in California in September, and brought to Australia for Christmas.

Pours a very light yellow colour, very much like a pale lager, but with a big, voluminous and crackling frothy head of white that leaves clumpy lacing. Lots of streaming carbonation. Body is surprisingly light, but it looks decent enough overall.

Nose is redolent with West Coast hops, giving a big citrus bite. The freshness is something I specifically associate with San Diego, possible AleSmith themselves. Hint of pineapple lurking in the depths. All up, it's all fresh, ripe and pretty tasty.

Taste is nicely balanced for the most part, with the citruc hops coming out strongly here, balanced with a sweet and slightly boozy note which lingers just a tad too long, leaving a big dollop of heat on the finish. Slightly astringent with a faint hint of crushed aspirin on the back, but very pungent overall. Characters of orange marmalade and pine needles creep in later as well.

Feel is sharp, and slightly hot on the back.

A big and pretty tasty IPA. Possibly a little late in the season for its optimal drinking time, but it's summer here for Christmas in Australia, so it seemed like the appropriate moment to drink it. (1,208 characters)

Pours a clear red to copper colored ale that manages to form a small head despite the alcohol level.

Smell is good amount of malt and brown sugar with a good spicy scent. Very bready base malt scent with a scent of rye bread in there. Extremely spicy scent with lots of hops scents, ginger, cinnamon and black pepper.

Taste is sweet and tart on the first sip with a good stomach warming. Good malt flavor that are kept ion check by a solid hop bitterness that is a bit herbal and woody in this young bottle, a year of aging will cure that. Good spicy flavors that are mostly in the alcohol components of this beer. The malt remains on the sugary side with herbal hop flavors mainly in that. The herbal hops carry a good amount of citrus flavor but I think that this really needs a bit of aging to be at its best.

Mouthfeel is very good and full.

Super drinkable for the alcohol level, I still think that this needs to be aged for a year to be all that it can be. (1,033 characters)

Summer Yulesmith 2009. Moonlight pint glass. The beer is saffron with an enormous soapy and frothy white head. The head leaves sporadic caverns as it slowly recedes. Lacing is all over my glass. A small fly has found its way to the beer and is buzzing around. Not this time, pal!

The aroma has a lot of bitter grapefruit, as well as some lemon notes. There's a good deal of pine, but grapefruit seems to be the dominating hop characteristic. The malt backbone is crackery and bready with some sugar, and though it provides a little balance to the hops, the nose ultimately belongs to the duet of grapefruit and pine. The alcohol is barely noticeable.

The flavor is very bitter, with strong grapefruit and pine notes, as well as apricot and lemon. I'd liken drinking this beer to tossing a few unripe grapefruits and a bag (that should be enough) full of pine needles into a blender and drinking it. Oh, add a lot of hops too. In other words, it's really bitter and delicious. There's a pretty decent malt backbone that is bready and sugary. The sugar is almost honey-like. The finish is very, very bitter, and it leaves some sugar on my palate to accompany the lingering citrus and pine. This is one of the more bitter beers I've had in a while.

Poured an orange color, good carbonation with a small white head. Nose is big with hops, big. Lots of pine. Taste was very nice upfront, big pine like liquied pine tree, malty with a nice hop kick at the end. Excellent brew and by the best in the growler out of the selections Ihave had so far. (294 characters)

A great gift by courtesy of BA Greg (Dukeofearl) when he and Alice visited London earlier this year. Thanks Greg! This is officially my first "bottled" DIPA, as I am lucky to have tasted DFH 90minute IPA on cask and something else I can't remember at the BSF bar, GBBF 05. Both were huge, complex and very different, further triggering my interest in seeing how these giant hoppy monsters could maintain their subtle distinctiveness... And having warmed myself up with several IPAs and heavy APAs recently, now I'm ready:

2005 edition, 8.5%abv. Served around 10-12˚C in a goblet.A: pours a copperish hue with exceptionally dark orangey hint; thick, cappucino-like frothy and creamy head, only very slowly dissipating w/o showing much movement, leaving layers of fine lacing. Very gentle carbonation detected. Beautiful...S: the texture of the smell is beyond my imagination--I could sense an invisible, air-tight cell occupying the space between the nectar and my nose, in which the fat fruity hoppy and richly malty elements are wrapped together, so intense and focused that it's unmovable and never dissipates... sweetened apricot and cherry, preserved orange, melted malt sugar, flowery honey, butterscotch, peach-flavoured milk(?!), rock-candy, endless fruit and flowery esters all over the place. The whole thing is thick, intense, complex but luckily not too aggressive~~ It's easily the most remarkable aroma of all those (only a few actually) American IPAs I've ever encountered, but it doesn't get 5 coz it proves a touch too sweet for me. (at the second pour and third the smell does soften remarkably and still bloody nice!)T: the first sip is like a hop-shell exploding on the palate and taking me aback!!! releasing high voltage of hoppy waves rediating towards all corners in my mouth and really "stuns" my tongue; after I put myself/my senses together after the first hit, the second sip shows a fat and oily hop-ball rolling onto the palate, gradually the incredibly thick orange-dominated citrus fruitiness spreads from the centre, followed by oily hoppyness, liquour-preserved cherries, along with buttery and sweet-biscuity malts, while the magnifying bitterness gradually intensifies from underneath just as a flow of flaming alcoholic warmth sliding down the throat like malt liquour. Thick but round finish, underlined by incredibly deep and lingering, herbal and slightly citrus-tannic bittering flavour deep down the throat on top of the simmering flames~~M: incredibly rich and round the mouthfeel is... with such a 110% body and 120% flavour, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that at the back of the palate the oily hops, thick malts and ever-lasting and ever-magnifying bitterness are all rolled into one, as if there is a centre of gravity to keep the harmonious balance...D: I feel very priviledged to try such a nice brew as my first-ever bottled DIPA. Actually I'm converted right away! But it's not to say that I would stop my love for "attenuated" American IPA and indeed even "smaller" English IPA, and "mini-mum" ESB, so on and so forth... They, as different styles, each show distinct beauty and complement each other to make the (bitter) beer world fuller and never boring. Three cheers to Greg and YuleSmith!!! (3,259 characters)

The beer pours a copper brown color with good head retention and lacing. The beer smells pretty good, and I get some nice hoppy citrus, pine and sweet malt. There is some fruity aromas from the intermix of hops and malt. On the palate this beer is very complex, with some nice flavors of citrus, cherry and pine. Although there is a fair amount of sweet malt on the mid palate, the beer finishes with a considerably hoppy, drying bite. This beer really grew on me the more I drank of it, yet another impressive effort from AleSmith. The beer has a medium bodied mouthfeel and, for the most part, the abv. is pretty well disguised. You can tell the beer's abv. is fairly high, but it's not at all obtrusive or intrusive, and ultimatley I was pretty impressed by it. While I wasn't wowed by it, this is yet another excellent effort from Alesmith. (876 characters)

A mosaic of peach, salmon and amber tones are all blended within a deep tawny wash; the colour actually shares strong resemblance to the skin of a pomegranate. It blushes to the light with a strong reddish radiance. Streams of bubbles can be spotted in numerous spots. The top fifth consists of a creamy, tanned, whipped piece of froth. It couldn't look anymore fantastic.

I'm happy to smell a lot of 'green' accompanying the red in this Holiday Ale. One thing that all good West Coast brewers do particularly well is make hoppy beers; Alesmith's Yulesmith pageants hops in all of their glory. In roughly this order the hop bill showcases: herbal, fruity, and floral. It pairs pine with hydroponics and blends the two with a wicked amount of citrus.

Throughout all of this lupulin madness, somehow, the malts still manage to shine through a fair bit themselves. They provide a very, very sweet, sugary counterpart to all this citrus and acidity. Prominent notes of dark toffee, creamy caramel cookies and honey coated wafers - all toasted to perfection - soak the palate with wonderfully delicious flavours.

The hops are also tasted. The beer again bears resemblance to a pomegranate, this time in flavour. A few other citrus fruits tag along, including grapefruit and tangerine. These hops impart a mouthfeel that is blistering with alpha acids. Despite the malt presence, the acidity is still left a little out of check. It doesn't hinder drinkability much mind you.

And neither does anything else. Certainly not the ton of hops, certainly not the almost 9% alcohol, and above all else, certainly not the 650ml serving size. I'm sure the 'bomber' bottle must have been invented for these kinds of smooth, quenching, incredibly quaffable IPA's and DIPA's. True or not, I wish all beers this good were offered in this size.

I really didn't consider this to be one of the top notch DIPA's after trying it for the first time (Summer Version). This sample, however, (Winter Version) has certainly lifted my holiday spirits. My Christmas wish is now that this "end of the year treat" could be an 'end of every working day treat'! This is one seasonal I will be revisiting each and every holiday season. (2,240 characters)

(Served in a tulip glass)This is the winter versionA- This beer pours a dense body of brown that glows reddish-brown in the light. There is a strong carbonation of tiny bubbles that support a thick lumpy head of light tan that last for most of the beer.

S- The full smell of green hops pellets right out of the bag has a nice pine quality to it that even comes through during the pour. There is a softer caramel malt sweetness to it that has a faint cinnamon quality in the background.

T- The caramel malt flavor is sweet but not sugary with a soft biscuit note to it. There is a green herbal hop flavor that is a big finish to this beer. There is a piney-cinnamon hint to the hops that has a nice twist.

M- This beer has a medium mouthfeel with a big fizz at the finish and a soft alcohol heat that increases as the beer warms a bit.

D- This beer has a nice big piney hop flavor with some good depth and a sweet malt support to it. The alcohol has a nice soft presets that gives a little boost to the hops. (1,018 characters)

A: The ale is a hazy copper-brown color, showing off more orange colors than not. The ale is hazy, thick with ultrafine particles that do no stand out as you look at it. The head neared a finger and was generally average.

S: The nose is thick with hoppy fruits and resins. Orange, grapefruit, pineapple, pine, the aromas run the gamut of the hop spectrum and don't hide the hot alcohol scent.

T: The age has taking a toll on the hop profile. The result is a much stronger biscuit and caramel malt that emerges mid-palate, leaving a graininess that I don't recall existing earlier. The hops are still strong but have changed, still exuding a grapefruit element but now a bitter, earthy dirty hop flavor scars the tastebuds, having completely crowded out the sweet aromatic citrus elements.

M: The aroma sets you up for a taste that falls short of expectations. The hops remain a force to be reckoned with though, its just that they have taken on a new identity.

D: Fresh, this beer floored me. With a year under its belt, the hops have dropped off and muddled the taste a bit. Don't age this baby, hit it fresh and hit it hard.

I've had this for about 9 months now. Pours a clear golden yellow color, nice carbonation, small foamy head which disappears quickly, some nice lacing afterwards. Scents of hops, malts, citrus, some spices. The taste is sweet and tangy, very well balanced, probably since it's quite a few months old. There's a nice bitter bite finish as well. Medium body. Very drinkable, another awesome brew from AleSmith. (448 characters)

Gold, with some sediment in the body upon later pours. Big, dense white head that doesn't quit - great retention and sheeted lacing. Great citrus nose as expected, some orange, citrus zest, clementine and juicy fruit notes all around. Sweet malt and some pine. Just yummy. Taste is just as awesome, soft orange/clementine/tangerine/mango fruits just melt over the palate, accompanied by a mild pine and sweet cookie-ish malt character. Light alcohol, but not unwarranted. Medium full body, with quite low carbonation. An awesome DIPA, Alesmith continues to impress me. (609 characters)

Poured into an imperial pint glass, formed 3/4" of beige head over the dark amber brew. Dense head lasts, and lacing is great. Aroma is all about the piney hops, but there is more than ample malt character to support it. Taste is similar to the nose, with biting piney hops upfront, which are smoothed by the hearty malt, and then ends dry with some slight fruit and alcohol character. Mouthfeel is superb, and drinkability is great as well. This is my kind of holiday brew. Ho ho ho! (568 characters)

Review from 10/2010 notes. Poured into a Nostradamus flute glass. Pours a medium orange amber with a huge, long lasting white head and nice carbonation. Hoppy citrus aroma. Flavor is aromatic hops and citrus balanced by a nice malt base and interesting fruit backbone not often notable in big IPAs. I like this quite a bit. Nice job (332 characters)